Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging tool that allows people to share their thoughts and activities with others. In 140 characters you can tell the world (or a group of followers) exactly what you are doing. I use twitter for a huge range of reasons. I have conversations with other educators, request help and have made some amazing friends. I also get an enormous amount of resources and teaching ideas from my network. There are also so many excellent resources and sites shared on Twitter - normally people actually link the site and you can go straight to it from their tweet.

To sign up you need to give yourself a username and password. Your username can be your own name or a nickname - it's up to you. You then write a wee spiel about yourself and start following some people. Try some of the people below. You can also add your name to this list too. You can opt to protect your updates so that people must request to follow you - quite handy if you are concerned about your students checking on you!

I asked some of my Twitter colleagues what they valued about twitter and these were their responses:

Here is a video about Twitter:

Advice for new Twitter users: check out this fantastic blog post by Sue Waters.

NZ Educators you should follow:

Twitter Name	Location
efreeman	CHCH
barbs1	Hamilton
mrw00dy	Hamilton
heymilly	Auckland
Keamac	Auckland
j_lietze	Tauranga
shazzandrob	Tauranga
allanahk	Nelson
lenva	Auckland
heheboy	Hamilton
suzievesper	Wellington
fionagrant	Auckland
achurches	Auckland
tonitones	Hamilton
fievels	CHCH
ageja	Wellington
MattJamesThomas	Tauranga
rachelboyd	Nelson
mthomasnz	Auckland
dorothyjburt	Auckland
rbvandijk	Tauranga
SarahStewart	Dunedin
janenicholls	Dunedin

International Educators:

Twitter Name	Location
suewaters	Perth, Australia
annieb3525	Victoria, Australia
pgeorge	Arizona, USA
Laurenogrady	Melbourne, Australia
jessmcculloch	Warrnambool, Australia
nrwatkins	Victoria, Australia
Steve_Collis	Sydney, Australia
kjarrett	NJ, USA
jutecht	Shanghai, China
tasteach	Tasmania, Australia

Check this link out for other ideas from Twitterers:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dhn2vcv5_819cbw8pngh